The Pixies’ Cave at Chudleigh
Pixies
of Torbay
It was once believed that another race of beings lived alongside humans in Torbay. Kevin Dixon tells the story.
T
he Pixies of Torbay were a little people who have long gone, either extinct or have been forced far away to Dartmoor, shrunk in size, learned to evade our gaze, or hidden below ground. We still remember them, however, in our dreams, but we have rendered them harmless. If they are still out there, they fled far from the reach of steam trains and gas lamps, but their presence can still be glimpsed in stories passed orally from generation to generation dating back hundreds or even thousands of years. First of all, we must understand the setting. Medieval and early modern Torbay was a collection of rural communities, consisting of small populations with folk beliefs coexisting with an understanding of Christianity. And the night was often seen as an unfriendly place haunted by non-human entities, some malevolent and some willing to help. Out there in the dark and in the hills was this enduring myth of the pixie. Though narratives of our little people are now concentrated in the moors of Devon and Cornwall, before the mid-nineteenth century both Pixies and Fairies were taken very seriously with books on peasant beliefs featuring many incidents and sightings. Places were named after them, such as Chudleigh’s Pixie’s Cave. According to John Britton’s ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’ (1803), the caves are said, “In the traditions of the peasantry to be inhabited by Pixies, or Pisgies, a race of supernatural beings, invisibly small”. There were numerous local tales of mysterious, magical
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‘little people’ living in the woods who would kidnap babies, cast spells, prevent cows from giving milk, chickens from laying eggs, and infertility in couples. Even in our Bay, some stories lingered, such as that of a dog lost in Kent’s Cavern finally emerging having lost all his fur to the grasping hands of those subterranean dwellers. Indeed, we needed protection from these, often malevolent, creatures. As it was believed that these primitive people feared the metal weapons of their more sophisticated human enemies, we hung iron implements such as horseshoes over our front doors. But were Pixies just a figment of our imagination, or could they be a half-remembered glimpse of a lost people? Intriguingly, there was a migration into Britain around 4,400 years ago. The DNA data suggests that these new arrivals from Europe led to an almost complete replacement of Britain’s earlier inhabitants - the Neolithic communities who were responsible for megalithic monuments such as the Churston Chamber Tomb. The DNA also shows that these incoming Beaker folk were physically different to the population they replaced, who had olive-brown skin, dark hair and brown eyes. In comparison, the Beaker folk brought lighter skin, blue eyes and blonde hair. One theory is that our supernatural folk evolved from memories of this lost prehistoric race. For instance, in folklore, Palaeolithic flint arrowheads were attributed as ‘elfshot’. But why were Devon and Cornwall the areas where
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